Why backlinks are essential to bringing traffic to your web pages

Often called off page links, backlinks are the oxygen of search engine positioning and traffic generation. When thinking about backlinks there are three things you need to consider, the source from which the backlinks are derived, the anchor text of the backlinks and the content of the page to which the backlinks sends the visitor to.

The amount of backlinks

The amount of backlinks to a page is one of the elements the search engines consider when deciding how to position the page in the results displayed to the searcher.

The origin of the backlinks

The source of a backlink can pass authority and indeed visitors to the page to which it points. So it follows that pages with backlinks from authoritative pages will receive fairer consideration from the search engines. Government (.gov) and educational (.edu) sites are prime examples of sites that are authoritative and trustworthy.

Google Page Rank

Google has the concept of ‘page rank’, this is the property it awards to a page it considers to have a history of accumulating authority from backlinks..

The ‘anchor text’

When you see a backlink on a web page it normally has a label a word or text related to the subject at the page to which this backlink is pointing, what this ‘anchor text’ says has influence upon the value the search engines give to the link. If the content of the page is about ‘parenting’ and the backlink on the page is labeled or given the ‘anchor’ text ‘parenting’ then the search engines consider this to be of more value to the searcher looking for information related to ‘parenting’ than if the backlink was labeled ‘babycare’.

Common problems

A significant number of people screw up their backlinks building activities because they focus on quantity as opposed to quality of backlinks. For example if all of your backlinks to your ‘parenting’ page originate from pages not related to ‘parenting’ then whilst you have backlinks they will almost always bring you the wrong traffic.

How to manufacture backlinks

So here is my no obligation advice for getting backlinks to your pages, great positions in the search engine results pages and quality traffic to your site.

1. Discovering the right keywords from the outset is critical.
2. I always set out to create a keyword cloud.
3. You should always start by identifying a key word or phrase which has a a constant and high amount of traffic.
4. The fastest and cheapest method to find out how much traffic a keyword or key phrase is getting is to use the Google keywords discovery tool.
5. I analyse words and search phrases relative to my primary phrase and build my ‘cloud’.
6. I then put together content in the form of articles and videos with backlinks with the correct ‘anchor text’ to my ‘money’ or ‘target’ page and distribute these to a wide range of content directories.
7. When I author content I do so with the reader in mind so as each piece of content attracts backlinks to itself as well as sends backlinks to my target pages.

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